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LAURA'S POV

It’s the impossible choice with which I’d been presented, a gulf too wide to bridge: expose my daughter to incomprehensible powers beyond our world or see my family die in the darkness of these tunnels. Every instinct I had as a mother was to grab Linda and run, consequences be damned.

But the logical side of my brain, the one that had made me Alpha King by age twenty-three, knew there was no fleeing this. The timeless presence that dominated the hallway was not asking. It was a statement of the inevitable.

"Laura," Lucien murmured, and it was the desperate guesstimate in his voice that I heard. "Your call."

I didn't realise how heavy that choice burdened me, I felt it like weight on my back. And then I was Linda’s mother, and my responsibility was to keep her safe. I was the Alpha King, and part of my duty was to the pack, but also in some ways to the other supernatural factions. After all, I was a woman who had managed to find her way through five years of single parenthood and political siege; sometimes the only way out is through danger instead of around it.

“Linda, darling,” I murmured reraching to stand beside Lucien so that I could see our daughter’s face. You know how we’ve talked about being brave even if you’re scared?

She nodded, and fear filled her golden eyes — they looked so much like her father’s! — but there was trust too.

“Mommy and Daddy are going to be right here with you. We’re not going to leave you alone, for a second. Okay?"

"Okay," she whispered.

The ancient presence seemed to concuer with the choice we made as an unbearable weight was greatly reduced. The huddling vampires shifted out of the way as a passage cleared before us to take you deeper into the palace and something that had even my alpha instincts blubbering in primitive terror.

We left as a unit—Linda on Lucien’s back, me at Lucien’s side, our pooled energy that made the shield this insane woman was showing us being enough to protect something that we wouldn't need but that made us feel less helpless. The passages opened up into a huge cavern that felt as if it had existed before humans determined to build cities.

Something waited in the center of the chamber. Not, strictly speaking, a being at all, but an avatar of eternal formlessness; a thing as old as time, without history or past to speak of; a void crouching between ideals and species and watching centuries pass with insufferable calm.

“Linda,” it said, and its voice had harmonics that made reality wobble. "Daughter of two alphas. Bridge between war and peace. He is the heir of the first Alpha King.”

The last words felt like a punch in the chest. "What did you say?"

The entity shifted its attention to me and I felt facets of my being splayed out and examined in such a way I could not fully understand. "You did not know? You have the blood of the original Alpha King, Laura. Your parents kept this secret from you to keep you safe, but they didn't die in random vampire violence.”

The tremors made the very earth beneath my feet move as parts of my life slid around to form new shapes. My parents' mysterious deaths. The way some of the older wolves had always treated me with a deference I didn’t understand. How I'd taken the Alpha King status with no effort despite my age.

“They were murdered,” I said, the words like stones. "To prevent this moment."

"To prevent the propaganda that might bring every supernatural species to be of a single bloodline. Linda–possessor not only of alpha and Alpha King blood, but the genes that give her the power to channel an ancient, remembered alpha who was king of them all. She holds the key to everything — whether we survive with peace or die for fate.

Lucien let Linda down gently, and she seized both of our hands, linking us together in a way that seemed like it could represent something much bigger than the three of us.

"Why her?" Lucien demanded. "She's five years old. You’re talking about whole adult responsibilities.”

"Age is irrelevant. Potential is everything." The ancient being drew nearer, and Linda met it head-on with the sort of bravery for which I was proud even as it broke my heart at an equal pace. "But potential means choice. I can give her the most unimaginable power—the power to bring all supernatural kinds together, to end thousands of years of war, and finally achieve genuine peace.”

"At what cost?" I inquired, even though I already knew it would be awful.

"Accelerated aging. She would age physically just as quickly to be able to contain the power. She would leave childhood far behind, grow up in a matter of days or weeks. And there was a good chance her body wouldn’t survive the change.”

There was something so offhand about how it described potentially killing my daughter that a red mist of rage flooded through me. "Then the answer is no. We'll find another way."

"There is no other way. If Linda doesn’t embrace her legacy, a realm of the supernatural … will destroy itself. There will be a war between vampires and werewolves until neither race is left standing; countless innocents will cease their mortal lives in the crossfire. The only alternative is transformation or destruction.”

Down below, Linda was staring up at the old, enigmatic presence with one of her serious looks for which she would put on when she tried to make sense of the more complex grown-up things.

“Mommy,” she asked softly, “if I’m a grown-up will it make sure the bad people don’t hurt everyone?”

"Sweetheart, you don't have to—"

"Would it?"

I cried tears streaming down the sides of my face as I closed my eyes and faced the truth. "Yes. If you took this power, you would end the war.”

"But I might not survive?"

“You might not,” Lucien said, his words catching in his throat. “And your daddy just found you. I can't let you go before I’ve even had a chance to get to know you.”

Linda was silent for a long time, her little hand gripping mine with unanticipated strength. “Being a good person means doing the right thing even when you’re afraid. miss Sarah says being brave is always doing what’s right even if it scares you. Is this one of those times?"

Her question was so wise it killed me. She shouldn’t even have to be wise. She should be fretting over playground etiquette and which flavor of ice cream she’d get. Instead, she was thinking of giving up her life, for people who would never even know her name.

“Baby, you don’t have to rescue everyone,” I said plaintively. “You’re allowed to be just a little girl.”

“But if I can help, shouldn’t I try?”

The primordial being lingered patiently as our family took the center of its chamber, embracing one another and confronting the inconceivable as a united front. Lucien’s arms wrapped around each of us and I knew that back to back the three of us would be a physical barrier of everything we should have been, it was hokey but right then I wanted our little family protected from all outside threats.

“There has to be something else,” Lucien said. “Less that doesn’t involve sacrificing our daughter.”

The second object is the letting go,” the presence said. “Go back to your lives, raise your kid like a regular person and let people of the supernatural world rip each others’ faces off at ever-increasing rates. The fight will come to Linda eventually. By that point, however, it may be too late to matter.”

I glanced at Lucien and found the same desperate computation in his gaze. We’d only just found each other again, just started to figure out what we might become as a family. The idea of losing Linda before we got to do the parenting thing for real was intolerable.

But the idea of sacrificing thousands — perhaps millions — of mythical creatures to save them was equally unthinkable.

“How much time do we have to decide?” I demanded, my Alpha King voice breaking through my maternal distress.

"Until dawn. He just won’t let go... Then it’s really out of everyone’s hands. The war of races will be inevitable and complete."

Linda drew apart from our embrace and turned going with an air of fierce determination toward the elder presence such as showed her for very sure our daughter.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, in her plain five-year-old voice.

"You may ask."

“If I do this grown-up thing and won’t it make Mommy and Daddy be together? Like a real family?"

The question hung there, so innocent and so profound that it reframed everything. Linda was worried not only that she might have to save strangers but also that she may need to save her family, too.

“If you do, many things which seemed impossible will be within your reach,” the ancient presence murmured softly. “Families rediscovering their way to each other.”

Linda glanced back at us, an odd look on her small face that was much older than what anyone should be allowed to have at five. "Then I think I want to try. But I'm scared. Can you grip my hands while it goes down?”

Lucien and I darted as one, picking up the space to our daughter and dropping on one knee beside her. We grabbed one of her hands each, and we formed some kind of circuit — of love, certainty, protection, desperate hope.

“We’re here, little star,” Lucien said, his voice heavy with tears he’d likely never experienced. "Whatever happens, we're here."

Linda said, “I love you both so much.” “Even if I get big ever so quick and can no longer play little, I will still be loving you. Promise you'll remember that?"

“We give word,” I nodded, embracing her one last time as my baby girl while I huddled for more comfort. “We love you more than anything in all the worlds.”

"Stay calm." The ancient presence was drifting near and I started to feel things start to waver around us. "Are you ready, Linda?"

She took a deep breath, squeezed both our hands one last time, nodded with the twelfth-century kind of courage that would reverberate through otherworldly history.

"I'm ready. Let's save everybody.”